Chemicals have multiple effects in biological systems. Because their on-target effects dominate the output, their off-target effects are often overlooked and can sometimes cause dangerous adverse events. Recently, we developed a novel decomposition profile data analysis method, orthogonal linear separation analysis (OLSA), to analyse multiple effects. In this study, we tested whether OLSA identified the ability of drugs to induce endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress as a previously unrecognized factor. After analysing the transcriptome profiles of MCF7 cells treated with different chemicals, we focused on a vector characterized by well-known ER stress inducers, such as ciclosporin A. We selected five drugs predicted to be unrecognized ER stress inducers, based on their inducing ability scores derived from OLSA. These drugs actually induced X-box binding protein 1 splicing, an indicator of ER stress, in MCF7 cells in a concentration-dependent manner. Two structurally different representatives of the five test compounds exhibited similar results in HepG2 and HuH7 cells, but not in PXB primary hepatocytes derived from human-liver chimeric mice. These results indicate that our decomposition strategy using OLSA uncovered the ER stress-inducing ability of drugs as an unrecognized effect, the manifestation of which depended on the background of the cells. Small compounds have the capacity to interact with multiple cellular proteins, thereby mediating multiple effects depending on their exposure to interacting proteins. It is quite difficult to identify the full range of effects of a new chemical, even for its developers, and some factors may be unrecognized. Even approved drugs show off-target effects that are often unrecognized during drug development, and which can lead to adverse reactions including lethal effects. For instance, astemizole has been withdrawn from the market in most countries because it causes a fatal side effect, cardiac arrhythmia 1,2 , by blocking the human Ether-ago go Related Gene potassium channel, thereby causing QT interval prolongation and torsade de pointes. However, we should not be too negative about unrecognized effects of small compounds, because identification of these can lead to drug repurposing. For example, memantine was synthesized in 1968 as a derivative of amantadine, an anti-influenza agent. Recently, it was revealed that this anti-influenza agent is also an antagonist for the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor, and the drug has become a medication for dementia 3. Thus, the important question is how such unrecognized effects of chemicals can be identified. Profile data analysis is quite useful in addressing this issue. Although the terminology sometimes varies between contexts, the method is a type of multivariate analysis that describes data using multiple variables and investigates the relationship between data with high robustness and detection power by sharing information about the structure of the data 4. Data from "omics" analysis, which converts biological information of a specim...